“Dancing with Spirits”—Spirit art and spirit-guided experiential ethnographic techniques

Abstract

Spiritualist mediums are sought out from a variety of cultures for their advanced spirit communication healing techniques. Otherworldly spirits use mediums to create spirit art, which guides an individual to discover their authentic self and work through self-limiting beliefs. To serve as a bridge for the spirit world, the medium develops an ability to enter an altered state of consciousness and use a multisensory embodied language to communicate with spirits. I describe this language as “dancing with spirits.” To investigate this language, I use my own spirit art as an innovative experiential ethnographic tool that blends auto-ethnographic perceptions of spirits with sensory and artistic ethnography, and cultural healing techniques. I provide three case studies of how my spirit art provides unique insights into the less explored experiential dimensions of spirit communication. I layer my experimental ethnographic approach with Deleuze and Guattari's “rhizome” to show that spirit communication overcomes limitations of normal linguistic models. The spirit language serves as a rupture for unconscious forces to offer individually tailored healing and insight to a recipient through heightened sensory and physiological phenomena. Art, altered states of consciousness, and anomalous sensory experiences may offer insights to address a pressing global challenge, mental ill-health.